The Guns of Singapore

Tony

Didn't Britain actually produce a detail plan by which Malaya could be threatened by an advance down the peninsula, using the extensive transport network along the east coast. Which accurately predicted the core details of the Japanese invasion a few years later. Actually produced by Percival of all people:eek:.
Yep. Shocking, isn't it? The plan even figured out ways to defend against it, IIRC, only to have the ideas ignored in the event.:confused:
My opinion, without beeing an historian, is that mounting a serious attack on a prepared and well defended singapore would succseed, but it would fatally delay other important operations such as the push into the solomons. Therefore a singapore that lasts longer and requires more japaneese attention would give the aussies and in general the allies more time to dig in other places and prepare counter attacks, which would make it even more difficult for the japaneese to establish their defensive perimiter(sp?)
Y'know, for a non-historian:p you've got a better grasp of it than most. Better than the IJA, too, by the looks of it.:rolleyes: Every little delay buggered the Japanese timetable for establishing the final defensive line. Now, delay here might mean no Guad ops, & by default a defense at New Guinea/Rabaul, which would actually benefit the Japanese...
 
Stefan, if Percival had the 50 btns to run Op Matatdor with he probably would have had everything else on the extensive wishlist for Malaya including a very powerful airforce and navy. But he didn't and at the last minute he changed Matador from pre-war plans of using divisions to his current reality of the btns that were nearby. This is typical of why I can't stand Percival. Sometime during his 7 months of command he should have looked at his forces and Op Matador and maybe modified it from Div to Bde size, or made sure that the well trained divs were in place at the expense of things elsewhere. Either way the IJA did have a plan to counter a Brit move into Thailand, they were going to build up futher north. But a decent Op Matador would have forced this to happen which as things panned out could only be a good thing.

As for naval forces, since there were amphibious landings in the DEI within days of Singapore's fall a powerful naval force (perhaps the combination of Force Z and ABDA) could have thwarted one or more of these landings, securing Singapore's rear.
 
Guns...

We do have a historical model from the very same time period of the effectiveness of Japanese heavy artillery against an Allied fortress.. in this case, Corrigedor, which had several batteries of heavy 12 inch mortars that it used as counter battery artillery against Japanese heavy seige guns located on Bataan.

During the months after the fall of Bataan leading up to the landing, the Japanese using artillery, with some (it tended to not be very effective) bombing silenced every one of these US pieces, which were in open topped mounts (although well protected from naval gunfire, not so much from howitzer fire and bombers). Although US guns did occasionally do some serious damage to the Japanese, the dense jungle terrain and lack of aerial spotting (because the Japanese dominated the air) made accurate counter battery fire impossible.

I see the same situation likely to develop at Singapore, particularly as Singapore is much more vital to the Japanese then Manila Bay. They wanted the Philippines to keep the US from interfering with Japanese moves against Malaya and Dutch East Indies, while Singapore was vital in order to launch the move against Sumatra and Java.

So no other points of departure, the Japanese bring up heavy guns and silence the British guns after an impressive artillery duel as the Japanese will have air superiority and aerial observation, while the British will not.

The post above alluding to the domino effect however is dead on... it would take time to then shift these guns to the Philippines, which means that Corregidor has to be starved out (it will fall though, it had a mere week or so food left when the Japanese landed). It would delay the Dutch East Indies campaign by several important weeks I would think, which delays the invasion of Burma, threat to India (including the Bay of Bengal Raid), also delays the assault on the Solomons and might even butterfly out the Battle of Coral Sea (with Yamamoto throwing all 6 carriers at Midway instead, which would see 4 US carriers vs 6 Japanese, but no other significant force changes).
 

Markus

Banned
Guns...
We do have a historical model from the very same time period of the effectiveness of Japanese heavy artillery against an Allied fortress.. in this case, Corrigedor, which had several batteries of heavy 12 inch mortars that it used as counter battery artillery against Japanese heavy seige guns located on Bataan.
So no other points of departure, the Japanese bring up heavy guns and silence the British guns after an impressive artillery duel as the Japanese will have air superiority and aerial observation, while the British will not.

There are two problems:

The guns of Corrigedor were either having a flat traject and could not hit the Japanese mortar positions in the valleys.
In case of the high traject mortars they lacked HE ammo, because they were so-called seacost mortars intended to shoot at warships.

The whole problems of "WI the enemy has artillery on Bataan?" was ignored by planners.
 
Y'know, for a non-historian:p you've got a better grasp of it than most. Better than the IJA, too, by the looks of it.:rolleyes: Every little delay buggered the Japanese timetable for establishing the final defensive line. Now, delay here might mean no Guad ops, & by default a defense at New Guinea/Rabaul, which would actually benefit the Japanese...

lol, well thats a result of playing to much War in the Pacific:D
 
There are two problems:

The guns of Corrigedor were either having a flat traject and could not hit the Japanese mortar positions in the valleys.
In case of the high traject mortars they lacked HE ammo, because they were so-called seacost mortars intended to shoot at warships.

The whole problems of "WI the enemy has artillery on Bataan?" was ignored by planners.

IIRC there were APHE rounds for the 12-inch mortars available, and one of the ordinance officers took a huge risk to put airburst fuzes into some of them to allow them to be used against IJA troops to devastating effect.

However, something nobody's mentioned is that even _if_ the guns and ammo are available, there needs to be somebody to spot the fall of rounds. By this point aerial observation is doomed and I doubt any radios or trained spotters were available at any time.
 

Markus

Banned
IIRC there were APHE rounds for the 12-inch mortars available, and one of the ordinance officers took a huge risk to put airburst fuzes into some of them to allow them to be used against IJA troops to devastating effect.

IIRC its the official US military history of the fall of the PI that said the modified shells threw up a lot of earth, but were still ineffective against soft targets, because the burst charge was too small.
 

Redbeard

Banned
I confess, I don't follow this one. How does not destroying the amphibious force not help? FWI read, Phillips could've got there & destroyed it with no hazard from IJAAF had he sailed immediately on the invasion force being sighted. I don't disagree with the morale shock of losing Force Z, but I do wonder if it was "a major contribution". The Japanese scored such a stunning victory, IMO that was the big one. It shouldn't have been anything like such a surprise, tho, given what IJA'd been achieving in China; presumably, nobody thought the "little yellow bastards" could do so well against Europeans, rather than "backward Chinese"...

Because the landings on the east coast of Malaya (especially the one Phillips looked for) were/would have been mere diversions that never would have had influence beyond the moral one. The main Japanese trust came from Thai territory down the Isthmus of Kra which lead directly into the dense infrastructure on the western half of Malaya. Of course catching and sinking a Japanese landing force anywhere would have been a handy moral victory, but IMHO not worth the risk of loosing Force Z.

Force Z was sent as a military deterrent, because Churchill vetoed sending reinforcements of real military value to Malaya - everything had to focussed in the Med. (where it was wasted in futile offensives). By 7th of December it was obvious that the role of Force Z was over - the last place on earth it should be deployed was the South China sea.

Since poor Adm. Byng RN officers had a tendency to home directly for any opportunity to engage the enemy, and I suppose Adm. Phillips also considered it his birth right as a RN flag officer to win the war alone, but his superior Booke-Popham should have stopped him.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 
IIRC there were APHE rounds for the 12-inch mortars available, and one of the ordinance officers took a huge risk to put airburst fuzes into some of them to allow them to be used against IJA troops to devastating effect.

However, something nobody's mentioned is that even _if_ the guns and ammo are available, there needs to be somebody to spot the fall of rounds. By this point aerial observation is doomed and I doubt any radios or trained spotters were available at any time.

I mentioned it :)
 
IIRC its the official US military history of the fall of the PI that said the modified shells threw up a lot of earth, but were still ineffective against soft targets, because the burst charge was too small.

As the mortars were eventually smothered by shellfire, it didn't matter too much in any event. They were just too vulnerable to high angle howitzer fire.

The main problem of Corregidor is that the fortress was supposed to work in tandem with a ground defense of Bataan. Once Bataan fell, it was only a matter of time anyway.
 

Markus

Banned
The main problem of Corregidor is that the fortress was supposed to work in tandem with a ground defense of Bataan. Once Bataan fell, it was only a matter of time anyway.

Correct, but before the Fall of (unfortified) Bataan the mortars did provide fire support, but it was not effective due to the right ammo not being available.
 
Yes you did mention aerial observation. Sorry I missed it.

But did the defenders of Singapore have _anything_ in place for artillery spotting in place? I've never read anything saying they did.

unless a POD exists where the RAF in Malaya has adequate fighter protection, it wouldn't matter if they had it or not.
 

Markus

Banned
But did the defenders of Singapore have _anything_ in place for artillery spotting in place? I've never read anything saying they did.

They might not see the Japanese artillery, but they will the the troops crossing the channel. A determined and somewhat prepared defence could stop the Japanese.
 

burmafrd

Banned
With the exception of France in 1940, the so called defense of Singapore was probably the most botched campaign of the entire war. It seemed like every single decision made there was the wrong one.
Percival was just totally out to lunch as a combat commander.
 
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